Skipping Levels: Listening Without Surveys
If your company has put off employee surveys* during the pandemic, you can still find ways of listening to your people and learning from them.
I’ve heard a couple of stories this week that warm my lead-with-purpose heart. Both involve big companies, one based in Europe, one in the US. And both use the idea of “skipping levels.”
The first is super-simple and takes just a reprioritization of your time. I heard of a management board member who places calls (not emails, not IM chats) to the direct reports of his direct reports, all of whom have been working from home for five weeks. His goal: simply to stay in touch, see how people are doing. As one senior manager who gets these calls said, “he understands how hard it is for my husband and me to work from home, with three school-aged boys, all confined in a Paris apartment.” The leader has his finger on the pulse. The manager feels heard, recognized, valued. And, as the case may be, at peace with furloughs recently announced.
The second is decidedly more structured. I heard about this one from an early-career individual contributor, now working from home, for a company whose services are deemed essential. Seems there was a broad program of “skip level” one-on-one’s, likely conceived before COVID but oh-so relevant as people are feeling disconnected from colleagues. The leader started with an acknowledgement that everyone could be feeling more stressed than last year, and asked the employee how she was doing. (The leader emphasized that only aggregated themes from the conversation would be reported, and that details were confidential.) Then, a Purpose Check In: “Can you remember the company’s purpose? Our team’s purpose? How your own work contributes to that?” The wrap up: what I recognized as a “Stay Conversation,” in the words of Beverley Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, authors of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em.
In both formats, assuming there is a base level of trust, there are huge win-win-wins for a relatively small investment of time and resources. The leader gains understanding. The employee feels heard and valued. And maybe the company has some data, even without the perceived hassle or expense of a survey. People on both sides of the conversations had the opportunity to learn, not just about the other’s perspective, but also about the success of recent roll-outs.
This is listening in action; listening that in and of itself can build engagement, instead of simply measuring it.
Congrats to those leaders courageous enough to step directly into a dialogue. Hats off to the companies who see that listening for insight, connection and learning is even more important than surveying for data, action planning and reporting. An employee survey has its place. May that place be surrounded by a culture of skip-level conversations.
*Many companies have opted to postpone formal employee surveys while they are navigating the COVID pandemic -- a decision I personally would question, but that’s not where I’m going with this article. LMK if you want to start that debate.
